What Narduzzi Said Monday About Pitt Win at Stanford, ACC Tiebreakers & More
PITTSBURGH — Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi took some time Monday afternoon during the Panthers’ bye week to sit down with the media and recap the 35-20 Stanford victory, along with tiebreakers in the ACC and other topics.
Here’s everything Narduzzi said Monday:
– Opening statement: “Obviously a good win against Stanford out in Stanford. Again, an undefeated team (at home). They’re all hard. We left a lot on the field. That’s the disappointing thing is I watched it with the staff. Offensively, we just can’t turn them over like we did. You guys probably went back and looked at the supposed shovel pass that Mason turns it over on. If he just follows BJ [Williams] at the line of scrimmage is probably a touchdown as well, but he cuts it back into an unblocked safety and causes more problems. We didn’t want him to get hit.
“But you know overall, heck of a job by our defense. Thought special teams played well. You can see why we’d like to bring Deuce out of the end zone sometimes. He had a chance to break another one for a touchdown or a break one for a touchdown, at least in the return game.”
— On Mason Heintschel learning from mistakes the following week: “There’s no doubt about it. He’s just trying to make a play, and it’s like, take the check downs, he’s trying to just do too much, which that happened earlier in the year. I’m glad it happened before the last three. You make those mistakes, one of these last three games or the next game, which is really the last game because it’s only one that matters. It’s a problem. So he’s got to learn, and he will. He’s smart. He’s not happy. So when he’s not happy, it’s a good thing.”
— On if there was any consideration to run Eli Holstein late: “Didn’t think about that, but we’re good with Eli, too. A great question. I’ll put that on Kade.”
— On passing on the 1-yd line on Heintschel’s first interception: “Just changing it up. You look at your self scout, you look at where you are down and distances, what your run-pass is. It’s keeping them off schedule. You thought it was gonna be another run after you run it like that, right? And that’s probably what they thought. They did some things different. They were bringing a lot of guys. They were trying to stop the run. So, you’re just trying to change it up and mix up your calls.”
— On if Pitt will change it’s goal line passing approach moving forward: “Not really. At least Notre Dame’s not gonna think that there’s a change in philosophy. We’re gonna do what we do, we got to do what the defense is dictating what we do. Just got to be smart with the ball and hit the checkdown. They were playing deep, and we had check downs, we got to hit them.”
— On Justin Cook’s first snaps of the season: “We wanted to get him some. Juelz got a little dinged up, and we were kind of afraid to put him the game. We had gone into the game knowing that Des was not feeling good, and we were prepared and Justin got more reps. He’s been a scout team guy most of the time, but we think, he’s a guy that we’d like to get a redshirt on and we think he can help us in the future a lot.”
— On Jaeden Moore’s first snaps of the season: “He did well. He got a couple hurries on the quarterback. He did well. We would have liked to got him more snaps, but we weren’t able to.”
— On if Pitt feels like its playing its best football right now: “I don’t know, probably not. As a head coach? Probably not, but you could probably ask them, they’d probably think, yeah. So we got a ways to go. We got a lot of things to clean up. Some of the things we’re talking about offensively. Again, we should have put 50 plus points up again. When a team wants to go for it on fourth down inside their own territory, and we stop them defensively, we give ourselves a short field for the offense, you got to make them pay so the next time they come out on fourth down, they think twice about it and punt the ball away. We can’t let teams think they can go for it, and it’s not gonna hurt them because if we put up 60 on you know people are walking in, the head coach’s office saying, ‘Hey, why did you keep going for it on fourth down? You didn’t get the time before and didn’t get it the time before.’ We didn’t make them pay, and that’s the disappointing thing. We got to learn how to put our foot on the throat and end it.”
— Only having allowed one fourth-down conversion on defense in ACC play: “Sometimes it depends on is it fourth-and-1 or fourth-and-8, fourth-and-6, fourth-and-7. So I didn’t realize that stat… People are looking at it going, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t go for it on fourth down.’ Then on the flip side of it, we’ve been successful on fourth down, offensively. Whether it’s a fourth-and-1 or fourth-and-2 that we go for it and convert, whether it’s, I think Deuce on the goal line, put it in the end zone. So, if you’re good on fourth down – people go on fourth down more than ever – so you got to be great on fourth down. Again, we work at it. Our coaches do a great job game planning.”
— On freshmen development: “You know, I worry about Pitt. I worry about what we do, how we do it. Let’s get the best high school football players that we can get. You look at Shawn Lee. He’s really good. He does things, he’s a gamer. He can think fast on his feet when things are moving fast. We’re not worried about the zigging and the zagging. We’re worried about how Pitt does it and what’s successful for us.”
— On approach with taking high school players vs. transfers: “Yeah, but we’ve also got a pretty high number of transfers in, too. I’m by no means Dabo where I’m not saying, let’s not take transfers. We’re going to take them, but our goal is to take freshman, as many high school players as we can. Then from there, find out where we are and what older guys end up leaving, and then fill when our older guys leave, bring in older guys for those positions, I guess.”
— On Heintschel and other Pitt freshmen coming in early: “That’s just came early, which all freshmen do nowadays. Every year we’ve had more and more. I don’t know if we had 10 or 11 or 12, but our first year, we may have had one. Shoot, one year, Jared Wayne said he’s coming early. We’re like, ‘We’re gonna have two,’ and then Jared Wayne called me in October and said ‘Coach, I want to stay.’ I think he enjoyed the weather down in Florida, as opposed to Canada. More of those guys are coming. He doesn’t seem like a freshman. He’s got a little bit different stuff to him. But so does Shawn Lee. So does Boosie. But that’s also coached as well. I think our coaches have done a great job developing and putting them in position to make plays.”
— Other teams taking note of Pitt’s young players/concern about it: “Ten years ago, you didn’t worry about it at all, so it’s different. I don’t worry about it. We’re gonna take care of our guys. I think it comes down to our guys are happy here at Pitt. They get treated the right way, the media treats them the right way, we do the right things. Loyalty means something, I think, and I think relationships still matter. We could say money and all that stuff is driving it. When it does, you lose that way. You lose when you make bad money decisions. It ain’t about the money, it’s about relationships number one, and I think that’s what we have on our football team.”
— On Heintschel handing things when behind the sticks: “Yeah, well he converted. But when it’s first-and-30, it’s not a good thing, but we ended up converting on it. We have a holding call here, we do whatever and make mistakes, but our kids, they fought through it. You don’t want to be put in first-and-20 or whatever it may be, but we’ve made some plays. I mean, I think was it Poppi or C.J. Lee had a nice catch, a 19-yard catch, so, you know, that happens.”
— On if Pitt CB Shawn Lee is playing his way into a starting job: “Yes, he could. So should Shadarian. Shadarian played really well, too. Between Tamon — Rashad didn’t play as good as he’s capable of playing, but you look at that and he’s played good football for us, too. So the good thing is we’ve got four corners out there that are playing good football for us. Shawn Lee, no one is going, ‘Oh, no, Shawn’s going into the game.’ Everybody’s going, “Oh, good. ‘There’s another guy that can go make a play.’ So, that talks about our depth and our development at deposition.”
— On Pitt penalties: “It’s always a concern. We can’t have those, especially we got penalties after explosive plays. We give up, explosive plays, whether they’re tic tacky ones or not.”
— On Heintschel facing different coverages with Notre Dame’s secondary: “There’s always a concern, but Mason is up for the task. It’s our job, as coaches, offensively, defensively, special teams to put our guys in. We’re just in the beginning phases of that, but we’ve got two weeks to prepare and get a good game plan. I’m excited about that.”
— On crowded top of ACC/tiebreaker rules: “Yeah, I don’t like tiebreakers. Tiebreakers are bad. There’s nothing worse than walking in a team room saying, ‘Sorry, guys, we aren’t going because of, we didn’t play that team or they didn’t play that team.’ That’s what they did. I still like the Coastal and Atlantic. You know? Is it fair? Then you’ve got tiebreaker in each division. It becomes harder that way. Who wants to go to the championship game or not go to the championship game because of one.”
— On fairness for teams to be at the mercy of the schedule maker: “Not fair at all. Absolutely not fair. If it comes down to who played who, that’s bad. So hopefully it’s a head to head. If you get beat to head to head, you don’t mind that tiebreaker. But when it comes down to you didn’t play a certain team, that’s not good. The bigger the conferences get, the more sense it makes to have two divisions.”
— On Pitt traveling to California: “I loved it. I think our kids did a great job. I think our kids were exhausted yesterday., we got home at whatever, 2 o’clock in the morning. We flew down, but I think they probably had a nice day off yesterday, kind of like I did. We just shut it down and just watch video tape. We all got iPads and computers, but I’m sure our kids were exhausted yesterday. I think everybody felt great going into it, and that’s the key. We had some dehydration problems. We talked about, on a flight that long. I think Katie, our nutrition, said you lose 44 ounces of fluid, just being on an airplane, but so maybe we didn’t hydrate as much as we needed to, or guys didn’t take that, because we had some guys cramping up, and it wasn’t that hot on as you guys know. It was a beautiful day. There shouldn’t have been the cramping, but I think that was probably more of the travel and something more learned from and for the next time.”
— On buyouts of coaches/shorter leashes: “I think so. I’m not going to complain against it, but there’s the pressures. The pressures of the job across the country and now there’s more pressure. So it’s becoming like the NFL. It used to be in the NFL, guy gets fired with the Buccaneers and all of a sudden he gets rehired with the Giants. College football is becoming like that. Even if you get fired somewhere else, your name’s on the next list to go somewhere else and do the same thing, probably.”
— On buyouts protecting coaches and schools: “Well, buyouts have always been to protect both. The coaches protecting himself and the schools protecting themselves. I think that’s what it is. You give a coach a new contract, he’s having success, you better hope that he’s working his tail off to continue the success and not going, ‘Oh, I’m good now. I got a good buy out.’ You want people that got that work ethic that can keep going. I think the buyout’s the same. It’s always been to protect both people.”
— On if it makes head coaching less appealing with shorter leashes: “No, because it matters if you’re a head coach if you want to get in this profession, you know what it’s like, and if you don’t win, you’re out. Whether you’re a head coach or an assistant coach – you think everybody thinks about the head coaches. You think about all those assistant coaches, on all those staffs that are probably looking for a job. So it’s the same thing. You’re going to pick your family up and move again. Like, where are you going to go? It’s no different than the d-coordinator leaving Ohio State. Made a great decision to go to Penn State. Now he’s going, ‘Oh shoot, do I have a job?’ One year later, when he just won a national championship. So, you start thinking about the money. I think about decisions like that, and you had great things going on in Ohio State. Things were great. You were getting ready to go to a parade. All of a sudden, you’re not going to the parade like all over money. Don’t make decisions over money.”
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